The 320 gigapixel image – taken by expert photography firm 360Cities – comprises 48,640 individual frames which have been collated into a single panorama by a supercomputer.

If printed at normal photographic resolution, it would be almost as tall and as wide as Buckingham Palace.

Playing with the zoom makes me feel like I have Superman’s telescopic vision. Although it’s not a perfect image (there are some seams in the stitching and people/objects are sometimes duplicated) it nonetheless give an idea of the power and versatility that super high resolutions offer. Future filmmakers will be able to capture 16K+ video of an entire set or scene without worrying about framing since they would be able to view the footage in post production, zoom in, and extract whatever particular piece of the scene they want.

If you then combine this ultra high resolution with computational photography technology such as that found in the Lytro camera, all sorts of possibilities open up, including the ability to adjust focus after the fact and mimick camera moves without actually moving the camera.

Although it is far below the gigapixel resolution level and doesn’t incorporate computational photography, RED has been working on a 28K camera. Hopefully we’ll get an update on this camera soon, as RED hasn’t said much about it since announcing it in 2008.